The fear of Hell.

TAKE A SECOND TO UNDERSTAND THAT THIS ISNT A TYPICAL ANTI-ATHEISM THREAD

I don't fear Hell or any place like it. I fear nothingness-- perhaps Hell is nothingness. I expect with time I'll stop worrying about it, I'm still relatively young and have plenty of living to do -_-

Oh goodness, you could have easily worded this 1000x better. Instead you just trolled super hardcore. 
 
And no, I don't worry about it. My religion doesn't really believe so much in a "hell", persay, and I'm confident I'll make it into one of the three kingdoms above the "hell" related alternative.

I think living your life well out of fear that you may be wrong, or fear that you could go to hell is not a good way to live your life, I think that applies to believers and the rest of us. 
 
In all honesty I personally don't ever fear going to hell, because to me it's just an extremely absurd concept. To me it's like lying awake at night wondering if maybe Santa really IS real. It's silly. And while I agree it's not immature to consider such things, I do think it is to still be genuinely afraid of them.

" when you're in that condition i just described, away from religious people to mock or your girlfriend to show off your atheism or your drug addict friends where you show off your negligence for religion, when you're all alone in the dark and have no one to talk to and nothing to do but listen to the whispers inside your head while staring at the black nothingness surrounding you, dont you fear the scenario where you die only to find that there is some fucked up god figure who've been waiting for you for all those years, and who sends you to spend eternity in a lake as red and hot as the devil's dick ? (where the only emotion you'll have is frying pain)
   

I disagree with the idea that I have these thoughts, or that they provoke a fear of some kind, I concern myself with the here and now, the thought only occurs when instigated by another or something external like this thread for instance.
  
As with Berseker above, I think it's silly to be scared of something that you have no idea of it's existence, not to bring this thread into proof of existence or anything, but I'm sure you see my point.
I also don't like how many assumptions you make based on your own experience.

I don't believe there is an afterlife at all, be it hell or heaven. I believe humans are just biological fuck ups that became sentient. I just enjoy my time living cause' I really don't believe there is anything past your life on Earth.

Let me prefix this by putting my moderator hat on and asking people to keep this civil. It is an interesting topic, and I hope we can all be adult about it and discuss it civilly. If it descends into constant arguing and flaming, I won't hesitate to lock it. 
 
Anyways, my thoughts on the subject. I don't believe in a god. However if a god does exist and heaven & hell exist, I see two possible scenario's of what could happen when I die:  

1. This god recognizes that I've lived a mostly good life, and I haven't done anything really bad, and I get welcomed into heaven.
2. This god condemns me to hell purely for not worshipping him.

I honestly don't even consider Hell as a possibility, but I don't live in a very spiritual place.  
 
However the afterlife would scare me- heaven or hell.  Think about this for a second: 
 
Human beings aren't perfect- there are nice ones and bad ones, but we have a natural tendency to fight and argue with each other. Think about all those sibling squabbles you had stuck in the back of the car on the way to holiday or whatever. Being confined to living with random people and put up with them for extended periods of time will naturally lead to conflict- that's why there is so much tension and rivalry in School and at Work 
 
The afterlife, Heaven or otherwise, is an infinitely long period of time, spent with imperfect people- I'm scared I might get sick of everyone there at some point, or that everyone will get sick of me. I don't think I could stand growing weary of people I love and care about because I'm forced to be with them literally forever. I really don't think human beings can operate under these "perfect infinite" scenarios healthily; we simply aren't built for that style of interaction. 
 
The only other scenario is that we spend our heaven in solitude, which would just cause me to miss everyone that I've ever cared about. 
 
When faced with a scenario where i never see the people I love again, or one where we all become sick of each other from over exposure, I really don't see a difference between Heaven and Hell.    
 
 
edit: TLDR version- Hell is other people; but so is Heaven

I fear not existing anymore. I was raised and live in one of  the most secular countries in the world, so the thought of hell, god and all that other stuff never really meant anything to me (due to no one around me being religious), it was just another story.

" I fear not existing anymore. I was raised and live in one of  the most secular countries in the world, so the thought of hell, god and all that other stuff never really meant anything to me (due to no one around me being religious), it was just another story. "

Here's the way I see it. I don't mean to offend any religious people here, and I have nothing against anyone who has taken on a religion, but I see religion as illogical. I believe that factoring in the evidence supporting all the existing religions out there, and weighing up these religious concepts against what we know from conventional science, religions don't follow logic. By the same token I believe that I could make up thousands of different illogical scenarios where I go to a kind of hell for not obeying certain made-up rule sets in life, and each of these is an implausible as those dictated by existing religions. Even if I wanted to save myself from hell there'd be no logical way to do it as there are thousands of different scenarios which all make as much sense as each other as ways to save myself from hell. This understanding of the situation means I just don't fear hell.
 
Also, as we soldier forward into another thread about religion I'd like to remind everyone to stay as civil and polite as possible. We're better than just letting this turn into a train wreck of a thread.

" @GunslingerPanda: well, now you are just assuming and stereotyping.  Brainwashing is different than believing.   "

Hell in Super Meatboy is certainly a bitch.

" When faced with a scenario where i never see the people I love again, or one where we all become sick of each other from over exposure, I really don't see a difference between Heaven and Hell.    "

" @TheSeductiveMoose said:

" I fear not existing anymore. I was raised and live in one of  the most secular countries in the world, so the thought of hell, god and all that other stuff never really meant anything to me (due to no one around me being religious), it was just another story. "

Yeah, this is pretty much how I feel too. "

When I was a kid (up to 14 or something) I did have some fears. When I'm 8 and it's pitch black I would get little voices that I make up and then I'd swear I'd see a ghost floating past and I'd be fucking scared to death. Since being an atheist I can say completely that I do not get those little thoughts or voices any more and literally have no irrational fears. Now that doesn't mean I'm not scared of anything, if I go around an abandoned house or a hospital at night by myself I will be scared. But I won't be scared at all by anything paranormal because in my world of logic and science those things are impossible, however I will be scared of the chance there might be a dead body that I could bump into or a crack head could jump out and mug me. These are rational fears that any human should have but I can safely say I don't have any fears at all of anything super natural which includes ghosts, random voices, boogymen, Hell ect.  
 
I go with MattyFTM's point too that if there is a God (and an atheist can never be 100% sure of the non-existence of God, just like no one can be 100% sure of the non-existence of a great mouse in the sky that calls God his bitch) then I have lived a Christian life by the most part. I'm good to others, I share, I do as I would be done by (I stop at stoning gays to death, call me liberal) so if I die and it turns out I'm floating up to Heaven and I say to myself "wow, didn't I get this wrong", there'll be God there who will let me in as I've been a good egg, I'll have to explain to him a reason why I didn't stone to death someone who forgot the Sabbath . If He says I can't come in and I got to go to eternal Hellfire and suffering simply because I didn't whole-heartedly and undoubtedly believe in his existence then that isn't a God I'd want to be a follower of anyway. It's win win. 

IF HELL DIDN'T EXIST, THEN HOW DID THIS FELLA DRAW THESE PICTURES THEN? 

ASSHOLE.

The possibility of an afterlife in Hell affects my mood and my thoughts about as much as the possibility of an afterlife in a realm of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ruled by Emperor Hot Chocolate XIII.

"an afterlife in a realm of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ruled by Emperor Hot Chocolate XIII. "

I don't see why anyone would fear not existing anymore. That is the outcome I really hope for. No pain, no anger, no hate, no happiness, no thought, none of it. No more watching the sorry state of things or being unable to control anything. Just a simple light switch being turned off. No worry or fears. I think the whole story of heaven and such came from the fear of there being just darkness when we die. I just never understood why people would fear this. I mean the whole subject begs the other questions.. Are we even here? Are we just a dream in someone else's mind? Maybe death is just the point in which we wake up. Personally the thought of a fire pit or a cloud city is a lot more unbelievable than the suggestions I put across. Who knows really.. when you think about it, we are just forms of information in the universe. Who's to say our essence doesn't swirl back into the particles and energies of the great expanse? I really see nothing to fear by death.. it is either the answer to our questions or the end of the asking.

Whatev's. I don't have anything to worry about.

Yeah, I'm terribly afraid of a thought construct proposed by people who lived in mud huts and stoned people to death for adultery.    /endsarcasm

Hell lies awake at night worrying about me.

" I don't fear Hell or any place like it. I fear nothingness-- perhaps Hell is nothingness. I expect with time I'll stop worrying about it, I'm still relatively young and have plenty of living to do -_- "

Hell makes no fucking sense at all. Why would they make hell? Why? And who would want to work there? The thought that there's a devil that enjoys stuffing a fork up people's asses for eternity just boggles my mind.

" @Icemael said:

"an afterlife in a realm of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ruled by Emperor Hot Chocolate XIII. "

I'll go along with that. "

I don't find myself in dark rooms with nothing else there very often, so I don't think about Hell much. Also, I don't really believe in the Afterlife, so that helps.

I ain't scared.

Anytime I worry about going to hell I just think...Hey, if God is sending me to Hell because I wronged him, and the Devil is God's enemy, then surely I've done right by the devil? *puts feet up and roasts marshmallows on a lovely warm fire*

I don't fear Hell, I fear death. That is what haunts me the most in those situations. The story of God, Heaven and Hell wasn't something that came up a lot during my childhood, since I was never around overly religious people. So none of that has carried with me to where I am now.  
 
Personally I believe that God is man-made and as such, Heaven and Hell are also man-made to give comfort to people fearing the unknown. A sense of meaning to it all.
 
"I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours but I think that God has got a sick sense of humor, and when I die, I expect to find him laughing". Song that came to mind while reading all this :P.

Maybe heaven and hell are abstract concepts, and we  can't even begin to understand them. Maybe it isn't morality at all that condemns us to one or the other, maybe it's some concept we can't even imagine or possibly even articulate. Maybe heaven and hell aren't even good or bad. Maybe they're both so far beyond mortal comprehension, we can't even imagine what they could be like. Maybe, by the time we die, we don't even care.
 
Also, the second sentence of your post is sad and prejudiced.

I'm way more afraid of the impact my actions and reputation would have on my family and friends than I am of the idea of Hell.  Hell never seemed like a particularly great motivator to be good in the first place.

I think the first question we must ask is... 
 

 when you're all alone in the dark and have no one to talk to and nothing to do but listen to the whispers inside your head while staring at the black nothingness surrounding you    

" i dislike religious people and despise religions and how they constrict our lives.  "

dude if you kill yourself you get 99 virgins

First and foremost, I don't believe in anything supernatural. That includes an afterlife. So my gut feeling is that there's nothing when we die. The body goes in the ground and the consciousness ceases.  I don't fear that, because I won't be able to experience it. To feel otherwise would be like worrying about what some guy in an office building in New York thought of me when he saw me on the street, from his office 10 floors up, when I was there in 2004. I never met the guy, and I will never experience anything related to his impression of me from 100 feet away. I don't think about or fear that, and I don't think about or fear nonexistence.
 
Lately, I've been reading and listening to a lot of scientists talking about the universe and matter, though. There's one guy who says that there are infinite exact copies of us and the Earth in this universe and/or in the multiverse. The idea is that if the universe/multiverse is infinite, and conformations of matter are finite, so there have to be exact copies of everything and there have to be an infinite number of those copies. Included in that idea is that an exact copy of all of the atoms that make up a person, all in the exact same formation, would mean that the copy would have the exact same consciousness (i.e. personality, memories, etc). This can only be true if there's no supernatural power, of course, since "god" supposedly breathed life into us and we're all unique and special in that case. Anyway, when I think more about the idea of my consciousness being the natural result of the way my matter is put together, then I start to think that the "afterlife" is just more of this. The atoms that make up my body become parts of other things, and maybe parts of my consciousness arise in those. it's not heaven, or hell, it just is. That sounds all right to me.

" @Ahmad_Metallic said:

" i dislike religious people and despise religions and how they constrict our lives.  "

Nice opening asshole. I dislike you too. Stereotype much? "

I was raised as a catholic so I'm not ignorant about the whole burning in a lake of fire. Now looking back on that as an atheist, I view hell as a fear tactic to make people keep their faith. There are plenty of people who are becoming borderline agnostic but are afraid to make the jump because they still think about maybe being wrong and ending up being sent to hell.

I think the only time, as for many other similar people, I will most likely think about heaven and hell when I'm in a burning crashing plane and I know I will certainly die.

"

1. This god recognizes that I've lived a mostly good life, and I haven't done anything really bad, and I get welcomed into heaven.
2. This god condemns me to hell purely for not worshipping him.

 With scenario 1, I'm happy, I'm in heaven and living a good afterlife with a good & forgiving god. With scenario 2, I'm sure I wouldn't be happy in hell, but I wouldn't want to be in heaven either. In scenario 2, god is evil. God condemns people to live eternity in pain and suffering purely for not worshipping him. That's evil, and I wouldn't want to be in a heaven with an evil god. I'd much rather be in hell. If this god is the forgiving & loving god that religions preach, then scenario 1 should happen. If it is a vengeful god and scenario 2 occurs, then I want no part of gods paradise. "